Saturday, July 23, 2016

The Test Made For White Kids, Not Black Kids – Exceptional Delaware

I get it now. A few months ago I was discussing parent opt out with an African-American friend of mine. He explained to me that African-American students don’t do well on standardized tests because they’re written for white kids. I disagreed with him. I couldn’t grasp what was right before my eyes.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment was made for white kids. Civil rights groups, usually backed by the Gates Foundation and other corporate education reformers, claim high-stakes standardized tests are important. They say they need to understand where African-American students rank compared to their peers. This only perpetuates the myth that these tests are necessary. These groups vehemently opposed parents opting out of these tests because they claimed it would only continue pathways to discrimination. Instead, the reality is staring them right in the face. Standardized tests do show achievement gaps. But not because they offer any solutions on how to close those gaps, but because they were written for a specific audience.

These tests fail to understand different minorities or cultures. They were created from a white culture perspective. They ask students to push themselves based on standards that don’t address poverty, low-income, special needs, violent environments, discrimination, segregation, or equity. Even for white students, many who also deal with issues of low-income in our country, don’t perform well on these tests unless they are from more affluent areas.

Charter Schools were supposed to be the savior of education. They were supposed to offer unique new ways of educating students and be models of innovation. Instead, at least in Delaware, they have served as incubators of discrimination, segregation, and racism. We can’t ignore this fact any longer. We have to address this as a state, head-on.

In all likelihood, our charters are merely copying what happens in our regular districts. We see that African-Americans in our traditional school districts do not fare any better on these tests. Charter schools and districts with higher populations of white students do better on standardized tests. This fact hasn’t escaped those who create these tests. They know this. Our politicians and The Test Made For White Kids, Not Black Kids – Exceptional Delaware: